The big debate over American healthcare is stuck in a trap. Government officials treat Medicare like a simple math problem on a budget spreadsheet, believing they can balance the books by constantly cutting pay for physicians. This ignores how our bodies work because human life is not just another line item on a ledger, and the medical care needed to keep people healthy should not change every time the government wants to rewrite its budget. 

Right now, independent medical practices across the country are quietly going under. For 25 years, the cost of running a medical practice has gone up, yet main street physicians do not receive the regular inflation raises that hospitals and nursing homes do. When you look at real inflation, Medicare physician pay has dropped by 33% over the past 25 years. Big Healthcare, including hospitals and the insurance industry, benefits the most. This creates an impossible trap for older physicians and new medical graduates alike, as they simply cannot afford to keep local medical practices open.

Republicans want to cut it. Democrats want to fund it. Neither knows how to fix it

I fled Castro’s nightmare — this new wave of immigrants is importing it

Why losing an election breaks the Left (and why the Right survives it)

This financial squeeze does more than close practices; it ruins the mental health of physicians and causes massive burnout. When the government cuts pay, corporate healthcare bosses trap physicians on a grueling relative value unit, or RVU, hamster wheel. This wheel forces physicians to speed through visits and rush from room to room to meet strict patient-volume quotas. At the same time, this metric has been twisted into the RVU........

© Washington Examiner